Films

After 20 years of marriage, neither Lindomar nor Alice expect much in the way of reconciliation. The taxi-driver saves his sexual impulses for the affairs that he maintains, with a preference for teenage girls. Alice pretends not to acknowledge her husband's infidelities.

Enter Nilson, Alice’s old boyfriend from adolescence. Alice sees in him the possibility to realize her romantic dreams, changing the course of her love life and finances. Once more she creates illusions that will lead her to nothing.

A Defender of His People examines how the legend of El Tepozteco serves as a source of identity and a behavior model for the tepoztecos. El Tepozteco is not just a legendary figure: he is actively present in the lives of his people. His voice is heard in the wind, and when necessary he appears in person. He is credited with driving away a federal SWAT team, and on one occasion even wrote a letter asking the tepoztecos to care for the environment.

Welcome to Tejalpa, Mexico in the year 2000. It's one weird and dislocated place! This ancient Indian town has kept many of its traditions alive, including the fiesta celebrated each year on October 18th. On this day the very best of the year's agricultural harvest is offered to the spirits of the town's main spring and aquifier. The annual tradition survives despite a rapid process of suburban sprawl and less-than-responsible development, which pollutes the same water that is worshipped every year! Using a mish mosh of aesthetics as diverse as the present day population of Tejalpa, the film demonstrates the clashes of modernity, tradition, communal stability, land disputes and ecological crisis that exist in the town of Tejalpa.

And the March Continues! combines documentary and narrative forms to present a history of the lesbian movement in Mexico from its origins to the present. Testimonies from Mexican lesbians and movement leaders give impressions of daily life in their country.

Caesar and Jonathan are two young kids, which found music by separate ways and decide to hold onto it with all their strength. But things will not be easy for them. Beyond their musical talent, they must fight against many obstacles: the educational system, the distances of a great city and the refusal of their own family. "Before Everything" shows what happens in a country where the culture and the musical education simply don't fit in a society full of prejudices.

The Biobío is one of the longest rivers in Chile, having its source in the Andes and flowing into the Pacific Ocean. In 1997 the Spanish hydro-electric company ENDESA decided to build a dam in the Biobío River to form the Ralco hydroelectric power station. In May, 2004, the flooding of the Ralco valley started and 70 indigenous families were displaced and "invited to live in the high mountains" at a height of 2,000 meters. Mapuche spokespeople who have denounced the situation of their brothers have been persecuted and convicted by the Chilean courts, using anti-terrorist laws developed under Pinochet, although none have ever been found in possession of a firearm or other weapons. “Switch off” is a tale about a usurped nation, about a forgotten genocide, about globalization, about one river.

Juan “Accidentes” Dominguez is on his biggest case ever. On behalf of twelve Nicaraguan banana workers he is tackling Dole Food in a ground-breaking legal battle for their use of a banned pesticide that was known by the company to cause sterility. Can he beat the giant, or will the corporation get away with it? In the suspenseful documentary BANANAS!*, filmmaker Fredrik Gertten sheds new light on the global politics of food.

Near the city of Muzquiz, Coahuila, lives a small population of black people, El Nacimiento de los Negros, descendants of the ones called black Seminoles in the United States. The black Seminoles were of African origin who assimilated with many North American indigenous groups from the Florida region. Together these people formed the Seminole confederation, (the word Seminole has its origin on the Spanish word “cimarrón”).

Prepare for the journey as an unknown, a nothing, no one. Prepare to leave everything from South and Central America behind and travel alone with a vague sense of direction and the echo of your family left in your ears. Prepare to face the same intimidation and corruptive danger in Mexico as you will eventually find 1,300 miles north, when you cross into the United States–if you live through it. As rich nations sharpen their borders and differences, the poorest peoples continue to blur them in the search for liberties too universally held to be claimed by any flag. Through this burning hunger, we are drawn into DeNADIE, and through its intimate lens and enduring crew, we find ourselves confronted with a story of immigration we only thought we understood.

An average of 400 children are born in Nicaragua every day, 100 of them to adolescent mothers. This documentary narrates the lives of three such adolescents: 14-year-old Kenia, from a poor neighborhood in Managua; 15-year-old Blanca, who lives deep in the mountains; and Viviana, a 16-year-old Miskito indigenous girl from the North Atlantic region.

Framed by the beautiful poetry of the oppressed Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas, this revealing documentary features memorable portraits of five gay men and one transsexual woman living in and around Havana. Their disparate stories and candid interviews dispel myths while demonstrating a range of experience, opinion and social status.

Southern Mexico. It's hot. An inferno. Here, like everywhere else, people are suffering and dying. In their homes, on the street. A young girl kills herself with a shotgun. An old man has a heart attack as he lies with a prostitute. A cock-fighter is accused of assaulting a bus. A man finds a dead body in the river. What do they have in common? They all appeared in La Nota Roja (The Red Page): the crime section of the local newspaper.

El Inmigrante is a documentary film that examines the Mexican and American border crisis by telling the story of Eusebio de Haro, a young Mexican migrant who was shot and killed during one of his journeys north. The film presents a distinct humanitarian focus in which story and character take precedent over policy and empiricism.  Towards this end “El Inmigrante” examines the perspectives of a diverse cast of players in this border narrative. A cast which includes the de Haro family, the community of Brackettville, Texas–where Eusebio was shot, members of vigilante border militias in Arizona, the horseback border patrol in El Paso, and migrants en route to an uncertain future in the United States.

"The Veil of Berta" is the delicate narration of the story of Berta Quintremán, an elderly indigenous woman who at the age of 88 leads the last group opposing the construction of the Ralco project, a gigantic dam that will stop the flow of the Bio-Bio River and flood the land where her native Pehuenche community, Ralco Lepoy, have lived for centuries.